"You have to focus, Trinity."

So over the past 24 hours, I've been considering my opinion on the shift to Focus, from mana.

I offer the following disclaimer; I'm not even doing Heroics any more. My sole two objectives in WoW at this point, are getting a Netherdrake, and the Conqueror PvP title. The 80-85 quests have been sufficiently boring up to this point that it has even been difficult to motivate myself to get to level 85, but I will probably need to if I want sufficient Resilience gear to finish rep farming for Conqueror.

I'm also completely solitary. I made the mistake of transferring back to Jubei'Thos in order to play with my brothers, but they have since moved to Saurfang themselves, ironically; and the community on Jubei seems to be largely non-existent at this point. I tried getting into a guild earlier on, when doing Vashj'ir quests, but got the usual "go go go!" type doing them with me, which I really do not want at all.

My other two activities in WoW will consist of old quests (Nagrand primarily at the moment, for interest's sake) and possibly gold farming for a tundra mammoth, as well. I considered WoTLK's quests to have been the best released so far, and so will probably also finish any of those that I've left also; although due to how much I enjoyed them, most of them were done during WoTLK.

Considering what I use it for, then, most people will probably say that the difference between mana and focus is not all that great. There is a noticeable difference, however. Given that I only used to put Viper on while travelling, (or if I was in really low level areas, where it made no difference) mana meant that I had to drink anywhere between every 10-20 mobs, depending on how much I was trapping.

Now, it really depends on how I play. If I'm not feeling in a hurry, and am happy with simply using Serpent, alternating between Immolation and Snake Trap, and auto shot, I can literally keep going forever. If I use Explosive Shot, however, I will often get down to 50% focus between kills, and so may have to use Steady a few times to get it back up.

Without knowing for certain, I'm idly guessing that will throw a bit of a spanner in the works for those who are doing Heroics or raids, simply because during long fights, there would likely be periods where you'd be stuck doing nothing but Steady (at least for a few shots) with precious little else to do until you caught back up; although given you'd only need 3 Steadies or so, it probably wouldn't be that bad.

The thing I loved about mana in particular during TBC, was the fact that in a 5 man or raid, if I had pots or runes, I could get it back when I really needed it; although I'm guessing that is what Ghostcrawler primarily wanted to prevent us from being able to do, as well.

The really positive side where focus is concerned for me, however, is that with it, traps are completely free; the cooldown itself is my only constraint with using Immolation now. I've removed the Glyph of Immolation Trap which buffed its' damage, as well; at my current level, Immolation has actually become a bit too bursty with the glyph on, and if I'm critting, I can have difficulty keeping threat on the pet.

If I was still doing 5 mans, then, something tells me I'd probably be feeling nostalgic for mana; but for what I do, the occasional per-mob delay is not a big problem, particularly considering that I'm often waiting on Immolation's CD anywayz, if I don't alternate with Snake Trap.

A slow re-awakening

"Mirshalak!"

An unknown voice violated my unconsciousness. I moved away from it, mentally; I didn't want to wake up, yet. Oblivion was warm, safe; peaceful.

"Mirshalak!"

The voice called again. I had no idea whose it was, but somehow I realised it would not leave me alone.

I opened my eyes. There were what felt like tree branches stuck in my back. I didn't know where I was; I couldn't remember how I'd got here, or even why I'd ended up unconscious in the first place. I didn't know how long I'd been out, but something told me it was a long time. The land was barren; a few dead trees, but not much else.

I struggled up into a standing position. I'd been lying in the open; my tent wasn't far away. My first thought was to whistle for the boar. It took a few minutes, but he came running. He was thinner than I'd almost ever seen him, and mangy; but he was alive, and thrilled to see me. For the moment, that was enough.

I got to my feet, somehow packed up the tent, found a nearby track, and began to stumble along it. I'd need supplies; fortunately I still had a bit of gold, somehow. I didn't know how it hadn't been stolen.

I wasn't sure how long I walked for; I was still in something of a daze, but eventually I came to what looked like an inn, of Orcish architecture. I was glad; I needed something familiar, and was in no shape to fight.

I went inside, to find an old Orcish woman tending bar, and occasionally fussing around the fire. Nobody else seemed to be around, but for that I was glad.

"Ancestors, you look like the walking dead!" she said to me. "Where did you stumble in from?"

"I woke up at a camp site up the road," I pointed vaguely outside in the direction I had come.

The woman's eyes narrowed briefly, but then she shrugged, and gave a gutteral laugh.

"I'm guessing you'll want some boar meat," she suggested.

I nodded wearily, and reaching into my old pouch, brought out a couple of gold coins. "And some hot cider."

She laughed again at that. "Yes, you look like you could use it!"

A few minutes later, I took a couple of halting mouthfuls of the cider. The spices were welcome; the heat felt like it was literally bringing life back into my body. As I ate, I asked the old woman for recent news.

"There's all kinds of chaos going on," she answered. "Most are still trying to find our feet and get things back together, after the Cataclysm."

"The what?" I asked.

She narrowed her eyes again, for a longer moment this time.

"Where have you been, that you don't know about that?"

I shook my head. "I wish I knew. But what can you tell me about it?"

She sighed, and began to talk. My eyes widened at some of the details, and as I listened, I realised that things had apparently become very interesting.

Feeling conflicted

So like I said last post, I reinstalled WoW, ostensibly only to play it with a cousin while he was staying here. He's still staying with us, but he went somewhere else for the last 24 hours, and so I'm on the computer alone at the moment.

I confess something; I feel like playing WoW right now. I've bought a new web domain, and was in the process of setting it up yesterday, and that combined with the heat has left me feeling a little brain fried at the moment. So I feel like vegetating; doing something anti-intellectual. Shutting off my brain while my fingers move, for an hour or so.

I'm honestly trying to figure out whether it is really wrong for me to want to play the game every so often. I think the main issue is that, even at level one, the cap and the concept of endgame, and guilding, and all those things that I really don't want to do, but which I feel that Blizzard really DO want me to do, are always there, looming in the background, like the proverbial bogeyman in the closet.

I think if I just log in, get a level of XP, or a couple of LFD instances (say 30-60 mins worth) every now and then, that that is not so bad. I'm going to still focus firmly on the alt game, but there's plenty of room for me to do so before I run out of content; the Alliance zones are still largely unexplored for me, for the most part.

I've rolled an Orc Shaman. His name is Kragar. I'm finding Enhancement with a large 2h axe to be a lot of fun. The class's survivability is also amazing; I've died twice on the way to level 10, less than I ever have with any class before, including the Paladin.

I've also realised that even if I do keep playing, I'm going to leave Mirsh deleted. I might even, eventually, roll another Hunter, (although that is looking doubtful at this point; I've seriously burned myself out with that class, at least for a while) but I'm going to leave Mirsh deleted. I think even more than anything else, even if I was going to keep playing the game, I needed a fresh start. There comes a point with a character where there's too much baggage, and too much weight, and I needed to just throw it all away, wipe it all away, and start fresh.

Anywayz, back into the game for an hour or so. ;)

World of Warcraft:- An autopsy.

My main is still deleted, but a cousin of mine arrived today, and is currently staying with me for ten days, before he goes overseas, possibly for several years. He is someone who I have traditionally played Blizzard's games with, and so I have relented to reinstall the game, and temporarily resubscribe in order to play with him.

It is still, however, highly questionable as to whether I will remain after he leaves. This post, and a deluge of other similar ones, which are showing up on the forums on a daily basis at this point, more or less echo my current feelings about the state of the game. There was one other fairly insightful one the other night, which I might have to try and track down; it goes into more depth.

Although I know that none of these will happen, much less even be listened to by Blizzard, for the sake of argument I will outline the changes which would need to occur, to genuinely reignite my enthusiasm as a player of World of Warcraft.

Brigwyn said in the comments of my last post, that he missed having people around who were willing to speak the truth about WoW. Brig, this post is for you, because a lot of truth (at least from my perspective) that I've been sitting on for more than 12 months now, is about to get spoken.

1. Class balance would need to be reverted to the state of around patch 2.1, and ideally, most of the restrictions that were added to the addon/macro system in 2.0 would be removed. Hell, an easier way of doing this would probably be to simply revoke/invalidate WoTLK entirely. I truthfully don't know anyone who doesn't think that this expansion has been largely a mess. The only part of it that has really been good from my perspective, was the questing. The 5 mans were bad, and I've hardly been able to raid at all, thanks to GearScore.

Let BM be our main damage tree again. I only had a problem with that because of how some BM hunters treated people socially, but in game, there was literally nothing better than having a BM Hunter in the same 5 man group with me as Survival. I trapped, they did damage; which freed both of us to do only that which we were specialised for, and allowed the other person to take care of the other half of our class.

If the Steady Shot nerf was repealed, it would be much easier to make Marksmanship sufficiently competitive to make Rilgon happy, as well.

2. The comic would need to be cancelled. It has trashed the game's lore. I would want it out of print. I would want Thrall reaffirmed as Warchief of the Horde, with Garrosh maybe as his second, but with him behaving. I would want Jaina as leader of the Alliance, with Varian Wrynn retconned out entirely. Have him fall through a crack in the universe somewhere; I don't care. He is a mistake, and he should not exist.

3. The Arena would need to be removed from the game entirely. This probably wouldn't stop the flood of FPS/console gamers, but it would probably help somewhat.

4. Character name change and faction/sex/race change options would need to be removed. These have done possibly irreperable social damage to the game. These days, reputation among players no longer means anything, so it is possible to behave like a profane, sociopathic, entirely anonymous FPS gamer, and then if necessary change your character's name the next day, with zero personal consequences.

5. Heirlooms would need to be removed. These have destroyed the levelling game entirely. As an alt Rogue in Razorfen Krawl a few days ago, I was generating 60 DPS without heirlooms, and a Hunter was generating 80 with them. That's almost another 25% overall damage, and the original 5 mans were not designed for those numbers.

6. The Death Knight would need to become a single target, rather than AoE class. Over-reliance on AoE has killed any requirement for tactical co-ordination within instances.

7. The Paladin's class role would be repealed back to that of the defensive hybrid, per the original design, and its' abilities (in terms of the bubble, etc) would likewise be returned to their previous state. Some of the improvements that have allowed Protection to be made viable as a tanking spec would be kept, albeit with a fairly substantial nerf to damage, and corresponding buff to threat generation if need be. The Retribution tree would be heavily nerfed, and it would be stipulated as a DPS tree for levelling/soloing only.

8. The horrific scenario with stat inflation and the destruction of the colour coding system would need to be repaired/reversed. Gear/stat scaling would need to be made much more conservative, and given sane, conservative rates, made on the basis of analysing the numbers of the original (pre-expansion) game, and extrapolating on that basis.

There would also, correspondingly, need to be a massive reduction in the number of available, epic quality items. The colour coding system only meant something when it was applied judiciously and with genuine care. 85-90% of the items available even to level cap players should be blue; the epic item class should be reserved for genuinely top end raid gear ONLY. The vast majority of the current epics should be made blue.

This change wouldn't just benefit raiders; it would make everyone happier, because it would re-introduce the feeling that everyone's gear was actually worth something.

As a corrolary of this, gear needs to stop being seen, both by players, and by developers, as an end in itself. Gear is not an end reward in itself. All it is for, is to allow you to get past the next level of content. If there is no next level of content, gear is worthless.

The purpose of gear is not to be able to idly stand around capital cities on your mount, seeking to have people stare at you in awe, as a source of narcissistic supply. Anyone who views this game in this manner, needs to seek urgent professional psychiatric help.

9. Blizzard need to stop mindlessly, shamelessly pandering to the lowest common denominator, in the name of myopic corporate greed. In response to a thread made in the DPS forum by someone quitting not long ago, Ghostcrawler implicitly made his priorities clear, by talking about population numbers and how well WoTLK was still selling.

Caring purely about short term player population growth above all else, while entirely neglecting the quality of individual player experience, class balance, and virtually every other element of the game, is not a good recipe for the game's long term wellbeing. World of Warcraft is being hideously mismanaged, in all of the ways listed above.

Ghostcrawler and the developer team are also now fairly clearly allowing their direction to be dictated by the chronically mentally ill 5% of the playerbase, that inhabit the forums. The single main reason why this is so disastrous, is because the forum's most vocal inhabitants (who are also among the smallest minorities in the playerbase) are dedicated Arena players.

In particular, the train wreck that is the philosophy of, "bring the player, not the class," must be abandoned if this game is to survive. Needing to bring individual classes, is the very defining essence of a Role Playing game. Virtually all of the individuality between classes has been stripped, and whenever he is asked about this, Ghostcrawler invariably responds that this is by conscious design. As has been commented on by other players, the fact that Blizzard wanted to remove the class forums, and replace them with three class role forums, only underscores the point.

There are only really the three roles now; tank, healer, DPS. There is no really appreciable difference between the classes in these three roles. Crowd control is dead. If you have either a Paladin or Death Knight in a group, any form of tactical co-ordination or execution order are redundant, as well.

This isn't a true roleplaying game; most implementations of Team Fortress have greater differentiation between class roles. WoW used to have an extreme level of diversity and asymmetry between classes. The level is rapidly declining, and again, whenever Ghostcrawler is notified of this, his response is to almost sound proud of it.

The game has degenerated into a mindless grind for gear. Other than raid hard modes, there is no challenge whatsoever, and any difficulty left from the pre-TBC game is ruthlessly nerfed by the developers as soon as it is found. It really is not a sarcastic exaggeration to compare WoW with Hello Kitty Island Adventure any more.

Socially, the game has collapsed. The addition of the battlegroup LFD tool, and all of the paid transfer and race/sex/name changes etc mean, as described above, that you are now entirely anonymous and invisible. There is no need for anyone to moderate their behaviour for the sake of social reputation at all, and so as a result, people's treatment of each other, outside pre-existing guilds, is utterly abominable.

Guild formation has been made much more difficult, because of the fact that it is possible to level characters entirely within the random LFD tool now, without needing to ever set foot in the non-instanced environment, after level 15. There thus isn't a scenario where you initially meet people any more while questing. Even if you make friends with people during LFD sessions, they're on a different server, so you'll never see them again after the current instance ends.

My problems with this game, as you can hopefully see from the above, are not minor, and are not due to any one single, isolated element. World of Warcraft is, at this point, showing very real signs of a large scale systemic collapse. The new expansion being named Cataclysm is deeply appropriate; but in the end, the cataclysm is going much deeper than simply the non-instanced terrain of Azeroth, and it isn't being caused by Deathwing.

Ultimately, it's being caused by Activision themselves. If I posted this in the DPS forum, I would expect Ghostcrawler's sarcastic response to be, "I assume you think you could perform my job better."

At the moment, my reply, quite seriously, would be, "You're damn right I do."

Stepping into the Light

I recently transferred Mirsh, my main, back to Jubei'Thos, the PvP server where I originally levelled her to 60. I strongly disliked that server, (and still do) but went back because I have two brothers who both play there, and very occasionally I am able to interact with them, when their raid schedule allows.

However, that still left me alone for the majority of the time that I play, and forced to deal with the extreme elitism and toxicity of that server. Seeking a solution, I browsed the forums, and discovered a number of glowing reviews of player experiences on Moon Guard, a non-Oceanic RP realm.

I'd already had a previously deleted Horde alt on Moon Guard before, and found it a very positive experience. (If a little intimidating; I've written a lot of rp pieces here before of course, but being continually in character for more than probably 15 minutes at a time can be a little strange)

I had, however, grown tired of elitism and playing WoW primarily alone. I had read that one of the differences of the Alliance as a faction (and certainly this was always my observation of them in game as well) was a much higher degree of social cohesion and community than the Horde, so despite what I've written in the past, I decided to try it.

The decision was made much easier by a strange coincidence; during my first night on Moon Guard, in the Goldshire inn I actually ran into my guildmaster on Jubei'Thos, who it turned out had a casual roleplaying, but Druid only, guild on the server.

So that decided my new class; a Night Elf Druid. I'm only at level 9 with him at the moment, and it's been close to 10 hours /played, I will confess.

I think it's partly because I really don't know the ground at all as Alliance, and also because the genuinely fascinating conversations I've been having are a continual distraction to levelling. You might not believe this, but I entered Darnassus, to discover a conversation about chaos theory, quantum entanglement, and whether or not the human race was going to survive the next century, being held on Trade. I was amazed, and this was followed by probably an hour long private conversation with someone who'd been on Trade after I left Darnassus, as well.

I'm in the process of reading levelling guides in order to discover the most rapid way to level this character. I'm not levelling it fast because I am planning to raid, at all; but the main reason why I want to get a fair amount of levelling out of the way is so that I can both spend most of my time at the inn, or in Darnassus or Stormwind, but also catch up in order to run at least a 5 man with the guild occasionally if they want to.

Doing an instance partially in character could be a lot of fun, too, although I don't really know anything about this toon yet; all I do know is that he is, of course, very different to Mirsh.

I'm planning on levelling Feral, and then being Resto at the cap, with Balance as farming/offspec. I don't particularly like cat form, (due to the comparitive lack of survivability, primarily) and would prefer to level Balance, but I've read Feral is usually considered fastest.

I'm also currently reading about something which I'd only recently started to experiment with on my Horde alts; multi-zone quest stacking. That is, going to one race's starting area, and doing all the quests there, then going to a second zone and doing all of them there, etc.

In the Horde territories it had a major, positive impact on my speed, but with the Alliance I think it's actually going to slow me down, simply because the Alliance zones are generally so remote and far apart. We will see.

The Argent Champion

Spent close to literally 14 hours within WoW today; my biggest marathon in a very long time. I was rep grinding. I managed to get to Exalted with two more factions; the Mag'har, because I wanted one of the talbuk mounts, and the Argent Dawn, because I was already Exalted with the Crusade, and wanted the two faction title.

I've wished for some time now that I could get a horse mount for Mirsh. The main reason is because most of the Horde mounts make the camera shake a lot when I'm riding, and I don't really like that. I've wanted a mount that was as smooth as I've experienced with the horse that my Forsaken Mage has.

The talbuk, I think, is about as close as I'm going to get, although in aesthetic terms as well as the suspension issue, my ideal scenario would be the Zhevra mount from the recruit-a-friend program. I had a friend a while back in the game whose toon was virtually identical to Mirsh, and she had a zhevra. It looked great, and really emphasised the African cultural basis for the reformed Orcs, as well.

A hat which looks great on Mirsh dropped from Magistrate Barthilas while I was farming Strat for Argent Dawn rep, as well. I've taken to wearing it while doing low level farming at least, although I think the one I really want is the Adventurer's Pith Helmet from Uldaman. Fits with the Indiana Jones type role I've always liked playing in this game.



I love Nagrand at dusk; it reminds me of an aunt and uncle's house I used to stay at, in the country here, when I was only around four years old. My cousins and I played cricket in a field at the back of the property, and that would be about the time of day we'd go inside the house for dinner.

Good memories.

2700 Gold

This is the milestone I'm currently at, in my long climb up the mountain towards epic flying.

I'm aware; all the cool kids got their flying shark when they were first introduced back in TBC, but for whatever reason, I just didn't get around to buying mine back then.

At the time, Tom Chilton hadn't quite managed to recreate the game in his own perverted image to the extent he has now, and it therefore wasn't possible to (at least theoretically, with a full stable of alts) earn 800-1k gold a day simply by drooling on the floor. This is possibly the only area where Chilton's drive to make WoW safe for the Guitar Hero demographic, has actually worked in my own favour.

Of course, being on a server where the auctionhouse is both active and certifiably insane (in terms of the degree of inflation) certainly helps. I'm not sure about other servers, but Star Rubies can sell for up to a dozen gold apiece, and Rugged Leather (pre-tbc leather type) is worth twice as much as Borean on Jubei'Thos.

This means that to a large extent, where pre-TBC content is concerned, I've finally found a scenario where I can have my cake and eat it too. I can engage in my favourite pastime in this game; charge rich alts 50-200 gold for runs through BRD, and sell the rugged leather I skin from the hounds there, for one gold apiece. Runecloth can spike to nearly 10 gold a stack, and I've also seen Dark Iron on the AH before (around two weeks ago) for 15g per bar.

Mithril, Truesilver, Thorium? Same as Saronite, on Jubei; 3g per bar. Thick Leather is the same as Borean; 55s per piece, or 11g per stack. Felcloth? 2g per piece. Winterspring is more lucrative than Icecrown, barring the dailies. Insane, I hear you say? Possibly, but I'm not arguing.

At this point, the auction house and imitating Indiana Jones via old content are literally my only focus in this game. I don't raid; I'm not even trying to do Heroics any more. Why, I hear you ask? The answer to that question would be Jubei's dark side.

The GearScore addon rules Jubei'Thos with an iron fist. Where raiding or heroics are concerned on the server, there are two groups of people; those with 4.5k+ GS, and those without it. Those with it are permitted to raid or run Heroics. Those without it stand outside the bank in Dalaran and cry; either that, or creatively adapt to their situation, as I have done.

Elitism is more brutal, and chronic, on Jubei'Thos than on any other server I have ever seen. Nobody seems run Northrend Heroics because they actually enjoy them, to even a remote degree.

I was doing the Heroic Halls of Lightning daily quest this morning, when the paladin tank I was with refused to engage the first boss, simply because his desire was so strong to be out of the instance in the shortest time humanly possible.

I've shifted focus to people levelling alts or first characters below the cap, and they seem to be enjoying themselves to an enormous degree. By contrast, I ferried a group of 52s through BRD after the H HOL disaster, and we all had a great time. I also ran a couple of 70s through the Mana Tombs the other night; again, great fun was had by all.

I'm not generalising about other servers here, but on Jubei at least, the central rule seems to be, that before the cap, people primarily play the game in order to actually enjoy themselves. After the cap, the motivation is apparently to either desperately try to find something which will cause onlookers in Dalaran (or other capitals) to gasp at you in orgasmic awe when they see you, or simply to get your GearScore sufficiently high that you are perceived as having fundamental worth as a human being.

I've never been able to (and I don't think I ever will) understand what the point of that is. Using WoW as a source of self esteem, for me, has always come across as an exercise in futility. The goalposts are continually shifting; today you're only considered leet if you have tier 7, and tomorrow it's tier 9.

The other thing that I've noticed, is that with only very rare exceptions, you're never actually praised if you manage to achieve the arbitrary prerequisite for social acceptance within the current moment. You're only ruthlessly abused, rejected, excluded, segregated, and discriminated against if you haven't.

So what are my own goals in the game right now? The first is epic flying, and the second is the Conqueror PvP title. If I manage to get a good enough handle on working the AH, I will probably try and shoot for a Traveller's Tundra Mammoth as well. In my instance tourguide/bodyguard type activities, the vehicle's capacity for extra passengers (not to mention its' ability to host repair and ammunition vendors) could come in extremely useful.

I'd lost faith in raiding probably a year or two ago, but it was only relatively recently when the same disillusionment started to set in for Heroics. The usual argument about Heroics, that it's old content, and therefore at this point gear is the only thing that matters, also doesn't wash to me. I can go to old instances with people any number of times, and still consistently have fun.

I can also, with the right group of people, have fun in the Northrend instances as well. Some offline friends proved that to me last week, when we ran Utgarde Keep and Pinnacle together.

One of them was new at playing a Warrior; not only did he lack experience at tanking with the class, but he was undergeared as well. So we wiped probably four times on Skadi, and in the end only beat him very narrowly. Yet I still had more fun wiping with them, than I've ever had in any amount of runs which consisted purely of "aoe lol," at warp speed, where the instance was finished much more quickly.

The point of this game isn't for people who are bitter or insecure about being impotent, powerless, anonymous, and inconsequential in offline life, to attempt to find a means to compensate for that fact. If you're a loser offline, go offline and do something about it there; don't simply live in this game in order to get a 5k GearScore, and then think you can be a petty megalomaniac towards those whose GS is lower. That is unutterably pathetic.

The argument that 5k GS is in any way necessary, is also completely bogus. There is no 5 man Heroic in Northrend which needs more than 1.8k DPS per DPS class, tops. The number for Patchwerk is 2k. The number for Sarth and so on might be a bit higher, but I'm guessing it's truly not much.

I've asked this question before, but I still don't know the answer. If, when people step into an instance, their sole focus is on getting through it as quickly as is humanly possible, then what is their motivation for even entering the instance at all?

The reason why I keep doing older content over and over again (or even contemporary Heroics, if I'm with the right people) is because I actually enjoy it. If people don't enjoy what they're doing in this game, then why are they here at all?